


A Night to Forget

by firefly124



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 08:33:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/305935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefly124/pseuds/firefly124
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor tries to clean up his own mess for once and ends up creating a new one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Night to Forget

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sahiya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/gifts).



> While it isn't quite Eleven/Rose/Jack, it is Eleven-Rose-Jack and a bit timey-wimey. Hope you enjoy it, Sahiya! Please pardon any errors.

It wasn't the wildest New Year's Eve Rose had ever spent. Well, she was pretty sure it hadn't been. Of course, she couldn't precisely _remember_ what they'd got up to, but that was just going out with Shireen, wasn't it? Which she must've done, because if she'd been out with her mother and then Mickey like she'd planned, she'd remember it. Wouldn't she? Bit weird not to have a hangover to pay for it, but she wasn't going to complain.

As she stretched and climbed out from under her duvet, Rose realized that she might not have a headache or feel hung over, but she was sore in all sorts of other places that made her wish she had some idea what she'd done last night. Rolling up a jumper sleeve, she saw she'd even collected a couple of bruises. She really was going to have to call Shireen and see what she remembered.

That decided, she padded to the loo to get ready for the day.

~0~

Jack knew it was dangerous to be checking out this part of London. He'd popped around often enough over the years, always careful not to be seen, but this was different. The readings Tosh had picked up absolutely had to be investigated, no matter where they might have turned up. That they'd been adjacent to the Powell Estate worried him and since he couldn't explain why, that made it something he had to investigate in person.

Though he'd been half expecting it, the sight of the blue police box made the bottom drop out of his stomach. Would this finally be his Doctor? Was this when he first met Rose? Jack wasn't sure if he could stand having to stay hidden from him yet again, not if it was his Doctor. But he'd have to.

It could this be one of the others, the one with the scarf maybe? Jack pressed himself into a doorway to watch and see.

It wasn't his Doctor. Jack let out his breath slowly. It wasn't the one with the scarf, either. Or the opera cape. Or any of the others. This Doctor must be an earlier version, considering he looked barely old enough to be driving a car, let alone a TARDIS. This Doctor looked around and winced, then looked straight at the doorway where Jack was hiding. Jack's breath caught again.

The Doctor's face broke into a grin as he jogged straight at him, pausing once or twice to look around as if to be sure nobody had spotted him. As if he knew he was risking his own timeline.

Jack set his jaw. Kiss him, then punch him. Or possibly the other way around. That's what he'd been waiting to do for over a hundred years, and if this version of the Doctor knew him, then he was damned well going to follow through.

“Jack!” the Doctor said once he was close enough not to have to yell. “Fancy find...”

Kissing first won out, and Jack poured a hundred and thirty-six years of waiting and questions and outright fury into it, even as his arm tensed, ready to strike.

Someone knocked into the Doctor, pushing them both off balance, forcing Jack to support them both, which made taking a swing a bit harder and completely ruined the timing in any case. He looked up to bark at the person to look where they were going, and his voice died in his throat.

“Sorry, mates. Didn't see you there.”

“Er, Jack, is that …?” the Doctor asked from where his nose was currently squashed against Jack's shoulder.

“Yeah,” Jack breathed, hardly daring to move.

The Doctor pulled away, straightened his tie, and then proceeded to do the last thing Jack would have ever expected.

“Rose Tyler,” he said. “We haven't met yet, or, well, we sort of did a minute or two ago, but that hardly counts, and there really isn't time to explain, but … run!”

They ran.

~0~

This wasn't how he'd planned it at all. Not to say that he'd actually planned to stop off in London at the start of 2005, but since he was here, again, obviously he'd left himself a mess to clean up.

Discovering Jack here was his first clue what the problem might be. There must have been all sorts of energy leaking around the place, between the radiation he'd absorbed and the start of his regeneration, quite sloppy of him really, sloppy and self-indulgent but what was done was done (usually anyway) and obviously it had been enough to get Torchwood's attention. Really, he should be glad it was Jack checking it out, because that lot over at Canary Wharf could have mucked things up terribly. Which might be about to happen anyway, because whilst Jack had been kissing him (not quite the hello he'd expected, again, not that there'd been time to expect much, and in retrospect running over to greet him might not have been the best idea, though at the moment he was hard-pressed to say it had been the worst either) he'd missed his chance to mop things up, as it were, before the scavengers came prowling around.

Now he had a bigger mess on his hands.

They'd made it into the TARDIS with a minimal amount of resistance. Rose had, it was fair to say, been a little reluctant to pile into what looked like a rather small box with two men she'd only just met, one of whom knew her name without her telling it, but the sight of three Truxarians—which Jack had called Weevils, a question for later—had convinced her. Now, however, she was back to being very suspicious.

“What kind of game are you playing, mate?” she demanded. “Where are we? Who are they? And whats going on?”

“Weevils.”

“Truxarians.”

“What?”

“The point is, they're aliens. Sensitive to temporal energies and apparently radiation, and they're after the traces I left when I stupidly crossed my own timeline, which I've just made approximately one thousand times worse.” The TARDIS shuddered as the Truxarians grappled with it. “The question is, what are they doing here?”

“Here on Earth?” Jack asked. “They come through the Rift and live in the sewers. They're sensitive to time?”

“I'm sorry, did you say aliens? Is absolutely everybody completely drunk tonight? I mean, I know it's New Year's and all, but ...”

The TARDIS shuddered again.

“Can we at least agree they're not students in fancy dress?”

Rose finally took a real look around. “This was a phone box.”

“Police box,” the Doctor corrected. He sighed. “Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Bigger on the inside. Aliens are real, and they're really fond of London. And Cardiff.”

“Cardiff?” Rose wrinkled her nose. “What would aliens want with Cardiff?”

“Don't knock it till you've been there,” Jack said, bristling a bit.

“At the moment, the question is not what aliens would want with Cardiff. It's what do these aliens want here. Answer: no idea. They have absolutely no use for the energies that lured them here, though I do think they might be a wee bit peckish. Anybody got some jammy dodgers?”

Jack pulled an odd yellow and red can out of his pocket. “How about we just sedate them?”

“You just carry around cans of alien sedative spray on you?” Rose asked. “Maybe I'm the one drank too much tonight.”

“That's as good an explanation as any,” Jack muttered.

“And then what?” the Doctor demanded. “You're not letting Torchwood have them.”

“Then we drag them back down into the sewers, where they'll probably stay once the energy clears out,” Jack said. “And then you start giving us some answers.”

The TARDIS shuddered violently, probably knocked on its side on the street where it was sat, and the Doctor wondered what Rose would make of it when the door opened to a world gone sideways. Probably the same as she had the first time, he thought wistfully.

“Or I could bring them home,” the Doctor pointed out. “Less dragging that way.”

“How're you going to do that?” Rose asked.

“Did I mention this was a spaceship?” the Doctor asked. “One that also travels in time?”

Rose just stared at him. “I've already passed out, haven't I?”

“Not exactly,” the Doctor said. There would probably have to be some passing out later, as she couldn't be allowed to remember any of this, though he dreaded the idea of doing to her what he'd done to Donna.

“Right, that makes as much sense as anything else tonight. So what's the plan?”

The look on her face when she realized he meant to drag the big, toothy aliens _into_ the TARDIS was almost worth it.

~0~

He should've known this wouldn't end well, Jack thought as he watched the Doctor sonic the door to Rose's flat open. He shifted her in his arms as he carried her over the threshold and into her room. He tried not to let the Doctor see how much it hurt that _he_ knew exactly which room was hers.

Gently, Jack set her down on the duvet and tugged off her trainers.

“Don't worry,” he snapped pre-emptively, “I just don't think she should have to sleep with her shoes on.”

“I wasn't going to say anything,” the Doctor protested from the doorway.

“That'd be a first,” Jack muttered.

Even though he had to have heard, the Doctor didn't respond to that.

Smoothing her hair with his hand, Jack bent and pressed his lips to her forehead. As he stood, he was surprised to see the Doctor hadn't moved into the room. Jack raised an eyebrow.

“I think I've already endangered causality saying one too many goodbyes,” was all the explanation that was clearly going to be offered.

Once they were back outside, Jack finally found his voice again.

“There's no point in asking for my answers now,” he said, as much to himself as to the Doctor.

“No, there's not.”

They walked in silence until they reached the black SUV.

“You know,” Jack said, “I'm not going to wake up thinking I had too much New Year's cheer. And I've got a team who're going to want to know what caused the readings that sent me here.”

“Write yourself a note,” the Doctor suggested. “Just … not too much information.”

“I do know a thing or two about it,” Jack gritted out. He knew the Doctor didn't have much use for the Time Agency, no more than Jack did really, but he'd never faulted their temporal theory training.

“Yes, you do.”

“I didn't get the impression earlier that this version of you was this laconic,” Jack said wryly.

“Sometimes there's just not much to say.” The Doctor shrugged.

“But I am going to see you again,” Jack pressed. “You'll tell me why I'm like this?”

The Doctor winced, and Jack found himself half-hoping that was in memory of a swing he actually did manage to get in. “Yes, I will.”

Accepting that that was going to have to be good enough, Jack swung himself into the driver's seat and dry-swallowed a twelve hour dose of Retcon. “Not going to say goodbye.”

The Doctor gave him a sad smile. “It's never goodbye.”

Jack pulled out a slip of paper and scrawled a few words as he felt the sedative starting to take effect. He crumpled it up in his fist and rested his head against the steering wheel. The last thing he saw was the Doctor, just standing there and watching.

When he woke, Jack had a moment of panic. How had he fallen asleep in the SUV? He barely ever slept. Taking in his surroundings, he realized he wasn't even in Cardiff, but rather dangerously close to the Powell Estate.

What had he done?

As he stretched out his hands, a slip of paper fell to the floor. He scooped it up and straightened it out. The first bit was his own writing, if a bit wobbly.

 _Nearly caused a paradox. Just tell the team it's dealt with, because it is._

All well and good, but what was dealt with? And why was there a pair of triangles below it? Something to trigger his memory later, he supposed, when it was safe to remember. Odd image to choose though. Almost looked like a bow tie.

Even stranger, there was something else written below in someone else's handwriting and nearly as cryptic.

 _You're not wrong._

Shaking his head, Jack stuffed the paper into his pocket and started up the SUV, not much looking forward to the three hour drive that lay ahead of him. Still, he couldn't shake the feeling of something for once having gone very right, even if he didn't know what.

~0~

“What do you mean you were with Jeff all night?” Rose demanded. “I never drink that much out with Mum, and I don't remember anything.”

Noises from the kitchen suggested Rose could get better answers out there, though she wasn't really inclined to ask her mother for some reason.

After a few more minutes, Rose hung up with Shireen and sat back down on her bed. She picked up her trainers.

“I was pissed enough to fall asleep in my clothes but I actually unlaced my shoes?” She shook her head and dropped them back to the floor, then flopped back onto her bed, a smile stealing across her face. “Well, whatever. New year, new start, and this time, I'm going to have a fantastic year.”


End file.
